'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius – Stoicism in Modern Language [video]
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I often have trouble with challenging people at work.
For the video, I find the format completely destroys the content. Reading the book, I can almost put myself in the situation of a Roman Emperor arriving at these conclusions, after weary days of argument, etc, etc. In video form, they just wash over as meaningless aphorisms.
There is a healthy and rational way to engage in conflict resolution and ignoring the problem, refusing to have difficult conversations, burying one's head in the sand, none of these things accomplish anything other than to result in a gradual surrender to people who have no such qualms.
I’m not saying stoicism is perfect or anything like it.
I describe what you’re noticing as “inviting death into life”. I do agree a lot of people use philosophies like stoicism to intellectualize and justify this behaviour. It’s a very common kind of psychological illness though, and people find all kinds of ways to do it. They suppress themselves (and those around them) by rationalizing their inability to engage in life.
I find a lot of people who do this can be very intelligent. When I realized how it works it was very eye-opening how little an intellect can protect you from maladaptive behaviours. The brain can seriously undermine itself through defensive and protective behaviour.
The classical philosophy was much purer in many ways than modern practice, agreed on that point.
Although I do often question how much value it was to Marcus Aurelius himself as a father given how his son turned out. I don't intend that as a low blow but as a serious question of the long term value of the implications contained in the philosophy.
I don't think it'll be possible to ever know why that happened and how, but it's worth being suspicious of.
One of the main issues with stoicism (from my perspective) is that people can easily think they're engaged in the philosophy internally, yet they'll rarely if ever practice it externally in the world. It's easy to think Aurelius was practicing it externally because of how he expresses himself in text, and how his time as emperor was positively renowned... But this doesn't necessarily mean he was engaged in practicing the philosophy holistically in all aspects of his life. Maybe he was a bad father. There is evidence that Commodus didn't receive as much guidance as Marcus himself did, which is odd. Marcus was ill and facing the worst kinds of things, yet you'd think he'd have the resources and sense to ensure his son was receiving training and guidance to greatest extent possible. It's easy to be critical, though. He faced tremendous losses and stress in his life that would likely wear me into a pulp.
But then there's also the possibility that the winners write history, and those who assassinated Commodus ensured that records of his rule were made to seem horrible. It's hard to be certain of what really occurred.
Still, there are likely more stoics out there who try to think like a stoic but don't act like one. It's the same with any philosophy. Bringing it into practice is the hard part, and most of us fail to some degree or another. I do think stoicism is particularly vulnerable to this mistake though, but that's only based on intuition and anecdotal experience.
Stoicism is like Buddhism or anything else here, where you're better off with primary sources or certain vetted guides/commentaries. Talking to certain segments of people that loudly consider themselves practitioners may not be the best way to actually get acquainted with the philosophy..
That's... Not what the idea was, but alright
Sure, if you can resolve conflicts and engage with problems, go for it and do it. Sometimes though the world around you is falling or you suffer terrible loss or you face impossible situations -- then Marcus Aurelius will still be there waiting for you, with advice to offer. Also worth remembering he wrote the thing itself with war and death all around him.
- It looks an awful lot like Taoism if you squint. s/logos/tao/ and focus on mindfulness and living in the present, and there’s a lot in common.
- I’ve read a lot of mythology over the years, but never heard real people talk about praying to Zeus. That was neat reminder of how much beliefs can change over time.
- The emphasis on accepting what life has given you because that’s what logos/tao/gods have willed is a lot more palatable if you’re an emperor than his slaves. It’s great to accept what you can’t change. It’s not so great to accept the bad things you could change if someone hadn’t convinced you it was the way things were meant to be.
- I couldn’t go along with the how-tos on not enjoying yourself. “Here’s how you deaden yourself to music: …” Uh, no thanks.
- “Art these days is so shallow and silly, unlike back in the day.” Ok, great^100-grand-boomer.
There was a lot of good, practical advise, though.
This is often read as a critic against Stoa. It's not really true though (though you might find a quote of some stoic somewhere that does agree). The tricky thing here is deciding what you can change and what you cannot change. Or in which way you can change things and how attainable that is and how much effort you want to spend.
Many situations and problems are not clear cut and require some attention devoted to them. Sometimes levers to change something are available where you didn't expect them. And sometimes you think you can change something, but it turns out to not be true.
Stoicism is not about being passive, it is about being active. See what you would like to have changed, and in which way can you change things. And no, complaining endlessly, as is common in our society, does not bring much change ;) That is passive behaviour where you set out to be dependent on someone else bringing change.
I think the “serenity prayer” is a powerful distillation of stoicism as you describe it:
> God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.
I’m not religious, but that’s beautiful.
I do disagree with your specific reasoning, though. Humans have an enormous capacity for adapting to horrid conditions by convincing themselves that it's not that bad. That's true in big society-level situations, and small personal ones: "Cut off my arm? I can survive with just one!" "This cancer isn't going to beat me!" "One day we'll rise up!" I'm not talking about Epictetus specifically. It's likely you know more about him than I do. I'm certain his condition as a slave was far different than that of a stolen African person in the Civil War-era American south, or people today in current places around the world. However, in general, I don't think "Epictetus is a former slave" is by itself strong evidence that his philosophy didn't allow for resignation to slavery.
Funnily enough, the founder of stoicism was a slave.
> - I couldn’t go along with the how-tos on not enjoying yourself. “Here’s how you deaden yourself to music: …” Uh, no thanks.
Which is what actually makes it very unlike taoism.
Which is not surprising, there was a continuous trade/communication between Chinese, Indian, Romans and ready of world. Slow paced but over decades ideas will spill over different cultures.
My dude, one of the most famous Stoics (Epictetus), who was one of the influences on Marcus Aurelius, was a slave.
“I listen to the whole book almost everyday. A true masterpiece.”
Wow.
I'm not saying at all this is AI (although at least some pictures may well be), but I can imagine youtube being filled with AI-generated content in a similar fashion going forward.
Question for HN: How much of this, with the correct prompts, could AI generate right now ?
It's hard to define precisely what "use of AI" is. Generating images with midjourney/stable diffusion would count (even if you edit them), having AI-generated code that's executed by the server of a SaaS you use wouldn't.
Edit: the biggest hurdle previously was no midjourney API. Now that DALLE-3 is released it is good enough and has an API
It's like lofi hip hop beats with the text being read over the top. I love it.
I always see people fawn over it. Personally I thought it was rubbish. Especially the part where he describes sex. It’s definitely more than just the rubbing of a membrane, or whatever it was that he said.
Really makes me wonder if those in Power, have an interest in teaching Virtue based philosophy to intellectuals, and de-emphasizing modern stuff.
>> Verily, you who are good and just, there is much about you that is laughable, and especially your fear of that which has hitherto been called devil.
Which could also be said as:
>> Those of you who are good and fair, there's much about you that's funny, especially how you're scared of what's always been called the devil.
The average modern english speaker would say the latter is easier to understand. I'd personally love for the entire book to be this digestable.
You don't see this in translations of his other works, like The Gay Science or On The Genealogy of Morality, which are better introductions anyway, not being explicitly literary like Zarathustra.
For example, "bad" documentation that forces you to learn a tool from first principles to do anything with it will produce lots of non-users, and some users with a deep understanding of the tool. If you replace that "bad" documentation with a cheatlist or cookbook or how-to, you may produce way more users, but they won't be forced to acquire the level of skill and knowledge that previous users had.
For some people quickly extracting the main point of Meditations will be how the book can have the most impact on them. For others it will be being forced to plan for some reading time to get through the book. For others it may be the process of searching the most useful form of the book, or even creating it. That seems far stretched, but I think you can learn a lot by trying to expose people to Meditations.
The original is in classic Koine Greek. Every translation since has been an interpretation and rewriting, often picking up the idioms and standards of the day.
>sheer dumbification
While you clearly just got that from one of the top comments and didn't actually listen to the video, can you explain what is "dumb" about that? If you've read meditations -- and note that this interpretation is basically section by section in order -- it's actually an entirely reasonable, understandable interpretation.
And having read the "original", where the original to me was an English translation performed in the 17th century by Meric Casaubon -- littered with 17th century-isms of English -- I found this video a fascinating listen because it made me reinterpret various sections.
Speaking of which, too many are far too focused on this being a "video". It's an "audiobook" with some AI images. The use of YouTube for audio is pretty common.
It's something one might casually listen to in the background while doing other things, marvelling that Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, arguably the most powerful and richest person on the planet at the time -- five hundred years before the birth of Islam and barely after Christ -- had such approachable, reasonable, "modern" thoughts and concerns and outlooks.
You mention something important I left out of my micro-review in another post. I was fascinated that a book so old sounded so utterly modern. It was so candid and intimate with little flowery pontificating (which you wouldn’t expect from it, but still). Instead of a history lesson, it’s a guidebook for modern living.
Clever guy, our Mark.
Most of the "easier" or "updated" modern translations inject a ton of their own style, erasing that of the original text. One that really irks me is a translation that "fixes" the style of the opening "from so-and-so, I learned such-and-such" sentences by making them clipped little fragments, with the claim that it's more in keeping with the stylistic "quick, dashed-off notes" intent of the original—but it isn't! That is not how it's written! Some translators made those more flowery than necessary, but they definitely aren't written like that! Staniforth's reads damn near identically the original Greek, but without being at all hard to read. It's the closest I could find to ideal fidelity that also isn't clunky—it mutates the language just enough that it's entirely acceptable and easy-reading English.
But I don’t get the same vibe from “vibin’ with it”. Ugh.
- Descartes
In other words, not the original. In fact, literally “in other words”.
If we can't expose philosophy to everyone.. then many are stuck with religion and that's not good for anyone.
For that matter: being stuck with Stoicism compared to Buddhism also wouldn’t be bad.
And I preferred it that way. The new "hip", vernacular style they go for sucks. If I want that shit, podcasts exist. I thought it sucked when they were starting to do it and I was still in the young, "hip" demo they were trying to target.
From this article about a different emperor: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n04/christopher-kelly/a-...
That must be why I find people who talk about stoicism to be insufferable dicks.
A “stoic” would read this and move on.
Read the book again, fellas.